


A Right to Be Remembered

by timeless_alice



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Historian Feelings, Mourning, a lot of author projection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 19:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15468018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeless_alice/pseuds/timeless_alice
Summary: Rewind thinks about the KnightsSpoilers for Lost Light 18





	A Right to Be Remembered

Rewind poured over the Mederi files. He couldn't help it, after learning the true nature of the Knights. Something about it had settled into his spark, digging into it with claws that refused to let go.

They had been explorers, much as the Lost Light crew were. They had set out to explore the vast expanse of the cosmos, to map the stars and find new worlds Cybertronian eyes had not seen before. Naive and optimistic, perhaps, full of adventurous spirit and hope in the future. A hope for themselves, and for Cybertron. 

A crew of Cybertronians who left the planet, to what must of been great fanfare and excitement. Rewind could picture it, even as he thought that as a historian he should try to avoid making up facts and blurring history: crowds gathering to see them off, the first ones to ever leave the atmosphere.

Celebrations through the streets, toasts to those who would bring forward a new dawn for their civilization. Bring back untold knowledge to change things for the better.

But then those 'Bots, unaccustomed to the atmospheres of alien worlds and biological makeup of alien species, fell ill. Miles from home, bodies failing and slowly eroding from something never before encountered. The first known case, little hope for a cure. Rewind had to wonder what had happened, when they had realized they were sick. When they realized that they were dying.

History always had blanks, he knew. Spaces between the points A and B and C that relied on sources that may no longer exist. Swallowed up by time and information creep, with those researching having to rely on informed guessing and careful puzzling that always left some things by the wayside. Details would be lost and embellished, and the true story may never be complete. Having a vague sense of a point A, and a concrete sense of point B, made the job a little easier.

As he dug through the files, he wondered if any ship logs had been saved by the Mederi staff. Doubtful, but they would have provided primary sources that would have allowed him to form a more complete picture. A sense of who they had been, before identities had faded from memory and the people forgotten, lifted from their status as simple explorers to something mythical, untouchable. People's whose mere existence could be debated by skeptics and worshiped by believers.

He would just settle for names. Names and faces of those who had died scared and longing for a home that never stopped to mourn them. Never stopped to miss those who had departed on a glorious adventure and never came back. After all this time, they deserved to be remembered for who they were.

Somewhere deep inside him, at the back corners of his mind, Rewind wondered if the Lost Light crew would one day be swept away into the far corners of history too. Forgotten, their stories chipped away little by little as the universe sped ever onward. Mythologized, to live in the minds of scholars and believers. A debated topic.

Rewind hoped not.

He found the files. Patient diagnostics. A single photo, where he could begin to guess an alt mode based on visible kibble. A name. A place of birth.

Blink of Upper Tetrahex.

Turbine of Vos.

Take Off of Polyhex.

And on it went, each one bringing them closer to home. Just normal bots, who’d lived and died and each had their own story to tell. Entire lives he would never know the details of. He committed each to memory, to carry them with him. So those who had died scared and wanting to go home more than anything else would get to return, in some form. Not to the thunderous celebration that they had probably left with, but returned with the knowledge that they had truly existed - had truly mattered - at all.

It was the least he could do, Rewind thought. A thank you to those who had sent them all on this quest. To those who died forgotten. To those who would be remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a historian and i'm real sad all the time y'all
> 
> i'm timelessmulder on tumblr


End file.
